It’s been seventy years after the Holocaust, and the world still hasn’t learned the lesson of where unbridled hatred of Jews can lead it, wrote MK Miri Regev (Likud) on her Facebook page Wednesday.

Israel’s official ceremony for Holocaust Memorial Day began Wednesday at 8 p.m. at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Over 240 smaller ceremonies are being held Wednesday night to be held in towns and cities across the country.

“Tonight,” Regev wrote, “Israel halts its usual activities and unites with the memory of the six million victims of the Holocaust, who were tortured and buried alive by the Nazis. The testimony of the victims shouts at us from the death camps, from the piles of hair and the mountains of shoes. It looks out at us from the faces of the babies who were torn from the arms of their mothers. These things are emblazoned on our memories.”

The Jewish people will never forget the Holocaust, Regev wrote. “We are commanded to remember,” she wrote. “We are not allowed to avert our eyes or to be inattentive. The threats from Iran symbolize, now more than ever, that our journey is not finished. Like then, there are those who want to destroy us, but the difference is that today we have a state and a strong army to protect us. That is the difference, and the lesson.

“We must continue to fight for our freedom in our land,” she added. “We must protect our state, as a Jewish and democratic state. We are a strong and proud nation, creative thinkers and innovative scientists. We have a present, and we have a future.”